Eight months before the filing deadline in Illinois and less than a year before the primary in the Land of Lincoln (tentatively set for March 15, 2016), state and national Democrats have left little doubt recently of their opinion freshman Sen. Mark Kirk is one of the most vulnerable of Republican senators facing the voters next year.
According to a the recent "We Ask America" poll among likely voters statewide, two-term Rep. and announced Democratic candidate Tammy Duckworth edged Kirk by a margin of 45.59% to 45%.
The survey was conducted before the official announcement of candidacy last week by Duckworth, 47, a U.S. Army pilot and the first female double amputee from the Iraqi War.
Although other Democrats such as Duckworth’s fellow Rep. Bill Foster say they are considering a Senate bid, few doubt that state and national Democrats will do their utmost to short-circuit any challenge to her nomination.
"You’ve got to remember that Tammy Duckworth is a protégé of [Illinois’s Democratic Sen.] Dick Durbin and of [Chicago Mayor] Rahm Emanuel," former Rep. Michael Flanagan (R.-Ill.) told Newsmax, recalling how Emanuel, as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in ’06, helped raise funds for first-time candidate Duckworth in the Sixth District in a race that was narrowly won by Republican and present Rep. Peter Roskam.
"And with all the backing that Dick Durbin has given her," Flanagan added, "that’s why I don’t understand why Mark Kirk tries to be such a big buddy of Durbin’s."
The two senators from Illinois hold regular breakfasts for constituents and have worked together on such issues as disaster relief. At one such breakfast in 2013, Durbin brought in cake and surprised his Republican colleague by singing "Happy Birthday" when Kirk turned 54.
Of Kirk’s friendship with Durbin, veteran Chicago political analyst Thom Serafin told the "Huffington Post:" "He’s broadening his base."
Six years ago, moderate-to-conservative Republican Kirk won Barack Obama’s old seat by about 52,000 votes out of more than 3.7 million cast. In that race, the former U.S. House Member and U.S. Navy reserve officer edged out State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias—a basketball-playing friend of Obama’s that even some fellow Democrats considered a less-than-stellar campaigner.
In January of 2012, Kirk suffered a massive stroke, and his recuperation kept him from the Senate for nearly a year. In 2014, more than a few Illinois political pundits speculated Kirk would resign from the Senate once Gov. Bruce Rauner was in office in January. This would ensure that a fellow Republican was appointed to his seat. The name most frequently heard as a successor to a resigned Kirk was that of three-term Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a leading House advocate for arming Ukraine and for an airstrike in Syria.
But Kirk, now impressively rehabilitated and showing little effects of the stroke, told reporters in November: "[N]o fricking way I’m retiring."
Kirk, a self-styled fiscal conservative and social moderate, may have some opposition in the GOP primary. Last week, swashbuckling conservative former Rep. Joe Walsh told Newsmax: "I have been urged to challenge Sen. Kirk in the primary and I’m seriously considering it."
Walsh, who now hosts a popular radio talk show in the Chicago area, said he would "make a decision soon." Noting the dismay many on the right have with Kirk’s votes to lift the debt ceiling and support for increasing the minimum wage and for same sex marriage, Walsh predicted to us that "if Mark Kirk runs again and is nominated, he will be defeated in November."
Other Republicans in Illinois and Washington, D.C., won’t go that far. But they will concede that if Kirk is to win re-election, he has his work cut out for him.
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax.
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